We spent some time at the tattie field today because we needed to remove some of the weeds.

We want to give our plants the best possible chance of producing a good, healthy crop so we worked as a team to remove the pesky weeds.  We couldn’t believe the length of some of the roots!

Having waited patiently for a few weeks, we are delighted to report the first signs of real growth.  There are a couple of rows of small potato plants beginning to break through!

Our next job will be to pull out the weeds that are also popping through as we don’t want them to have a negative impact on our crop.

Now that the seed potatoes are securely bedded in, we thought it would be a good idea to find out about the bugs and diseases that may attack our first crop.

Boy, there are certainly a few potato pests to look out for!  First of all there is potato blackleg.

This disease causes black rotting at the stem base.  If we do not remove the affected plants in time it could lead to rotten tatties!

Then we came across potato blight.  This disease is common in warm, wet summers and a brown watery rot will appear on the leaves and stems.

If that wasn’t enough our new crop might also be attacked by potato rot! Potato rot can happen if we harvest our crop from wet soil.

Finally we have to keep an eye out for slugs and snails.  During our research we found out that broken up egg-shells are a natural way of keeping these pests away.  Miss Sewell spoke to the school kitchen and they have agreed to give us the egg-shells they usually put into the recycling.